This invention —a PDF exclusive invention —structurally and methodologically relates to the speedy, efficient and high-quality handling of an image-only file in a PDF data stream which is en route to a printer. Such a file might typically have been initiated by a document scanning operation aimed at sending that document to a recipient printer via e-mail and the Internet. Other transit modalities are, of course, possible, and the present invention is independent of all such modalities.
Typical PDF conventional, or standard, data-handling protocols and environments are rich with capabilities for many tasks involved with managing, manipulating and conveying PDF data files, but are notably less than fully satisfactory in certain ways with regard to the handling of image-only PDF files. Handling and processing of such files is often discomfortingly slow and tedious and end printed-image results often result as image-quality disappointments.
The present invention tackles these less-than-satisfactory, conventional, PDF image-file handling image-only issues, and effectively does so by monitoring an en route PDF data stream to detect the presence (or presences) of any truly PDF image-only file (or files) in that stream.
According to the invention, such an image-only file is functionally deflected and channeled away from conventional, downstream, PDF handling protocols and environments, and is, instead, fed dedicatedly to a new PDF image-only-committed pipeline, wherein it is treated to speedy and efficient handling, and passing along for printing, with printed results meeting very high standards of printed-image quality.
The various features and advantages of the invention will now shortly become very apparent as the detailed description which follows is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.